The Toronto Maple Leafs are considered an outside title contender entering the 2024-2025 NHL season, but looking at their projected lineup reveals plenty of reasons to be optimistic.
The play of its star players is the biggest factor that will ultimately determine the Toronto Maple Leafs fate, but improvements in other areas bring hope.
General Manager Brad Treliving's offseason changes have the Maple Leafs in better shape than they were a year ago, though their forwards are worse and they still didn't address the teams fatal flaw.
A more versatile defense and the potential of their young prospects have the Leafs in a much better position to challenge the top NHL teams during the 2024-2025 season.
The Toronto Maple Leafs Defense Is Much Improved
Entering the 2023-2024 season, the Maple Leafs defense was its biggest weakness. The John Klingberg signing was a disaster and the play of aging mainstays T.J. Brodie and Mark Giordano regressed. Only unheralded Simon Benoit played above expectations.
Trade deadline additions Joel Edmundson and Ilya Lyubushkin were misguided ideas that made the Leafs ability to move the puck from the back-end almost non-existant. This blew up in their faces in the playoffs when they failed to score three goals in a game in six out of seven contests.
Treliving's biggest acquisition during free agency was signing Chris Tanev. The other significant addition to the defense was signing free-agent Oliver Ekman Larsson.
Tanev is the top-pairing right-shooting defenseman that the Leafs lacked. Ekman-Larsson brings needed offense to the team's blue line but is an expensive bottom-pairing player. Both are adept puck-movers who can help the transition game by getting the puck to the Maple Leafs stars up front.
Ekman-Larsson is a logical fit to pair with Timothy Liljegren. The projected Morgan Rielly-Tanev pairing gives the Leafs a balanced top two. Jake McCabe and Benoit played many minutes together last year, though players like Topi Niemela and Caden Weber are coming for his minutes.
Outside the top six, Conor Timmins and Simon Benoit will bring offensive and defensive depth to the blue line depending on specific game needs or injuries.
Tanev and Ekman-Larsson (not to mention Rielly and McCabe) both carry risk due to their age, but there is no denying the potential of the Leafs 2024-2025 blue line far exceeds last year's starting and end-of-season editions.
The Toronto Maple Leafs Projected Lineup Much Improved From Last Season
The defense's additions aren't the only area where the Maple Leafs have improved.
An injection of youth from prospects like Easton Cowan or Fraser Minten would boost the team's bottom six forwards, currently the Leafs most glaring weakness.
If the two highly-regarded prospects don't crack the lineup, young veterans Matthew Knies and Joseph Woll will have prominent roles on the team.
Knies is a logical replacement for the departed Tyler Bertuzzi but with a greater upside. He can score twenty-plus goals and is a better playmaker. He is also a strong skater who can play on both special teams units.
Woll's health has been the biggest impediment to him taking over the Leafs starting netminding duties. Playing about half the games in a competitive tandem with newcomer Anthony Stolarz gives the team much stronger possibilities in goal than they had with Ilya Samsonov.
In Woll's minimal experience, he has proven to be a calm, positionally sound goaltender who plays better when the spotlight is biggest. The Leafs signing of Stolarz plus veteran Matt Murray as the third-string netminder gives the Leafs insurance behind Woll.
The current Stanley Cup odds may not show it, but the Toronto Maple Leafs have insulated their stars with much more potential and versatility as their new season beckons.